Page 154 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

utopia 1931

The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an
end to history and to establish a final and permanent
calm. • Ludwig Von Mises (1881–1973)

most modern readers interpret symbolically but which More’s Utopia (1516), a fictional account of a traveler
was considered very real by medieval and Renaissance who has returned to Europe after having visited an island
Christians who speculated about its location. commonwealth where land is held in common, both men
Idealized lands and kingdoms preoccupied the and women are educated, and there is religious tolerance.
medieval mind. The Land of Cockaigne was a folk fan- Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) combined revolu-
tasy of a peasant’s paradise into which the aristocrats or tionary and scholarly insights to write his utopian
wealthy clergy would not be admitted. The Land of visions. His Monarchia messiae (Anointed King) pro-
Prester John, documented in the travel narratives of poses the establishment of one world ruler and one
Marco Polo (1254–1324) and John Mandeville (flour- world religion. Citta del sole (City of the Sun) suggests
ished 1356), was a product of the medieval fascination that the head of the ideal city would be a priest-king, like
with distant lands. It is surrounded by pagan nations that of the Land of Prester John. Drawing on Plato’s
but ruled by a benign priest-king (so it has much in Timaeus as well as More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon (1561–
common with the philosophical utopias of Judaism and 1626) imagined an ideal society in New Atlantis; its cap-
Christianity). ital, Bensalem, is organized around scientific study and its
rulers are scientist-kings.
Philosophical Utopias
Theorizing about the ideal human community has an Historical Utopias
ancient and diverse ancestry. In The Republic, Plato Actual communities based on the principles spelled out
(c. 428 BCE–348? BCE) discussed the necessity for vir- in the literary or philosophical utopian traditions have
tuous philosopher kings to rule over virtuous citizens. often been attempted. Rarely outliving their visionary
In his obscure work Timaeus, Plato introduced the world founders, utopian communities nonetheless introduce
to the legend of Atlantis, a staple of utopian literature innovations into mainstream societies.
even today. The Analects of Confucius (K’ung Fu-tzu) European colonization of the Americas was accompa-
(551 BCE–479 BCE) collects the Chinese philosopher’s nied by utopian schemes that tried to implement what
teachings about the right order of society in which the visionary texts merely described. English settlements in
ruler’s and people’s virtue ensure stability and prosperity. North America, in particular, imagined themselves as the
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share common tradi- “new Israel,” or the “new Chosen People.” Puritan Sepa-
tions relating to an ideal social order.The Torah describes ratists (such as the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation)
a promised land flowing with milk and honey, and the established a theocratic community, which they tried to
prophetic literature of Judaism imagines a messianic keep pure by exiling their more wayward members,
kingdom ruled over by a virtuous, priestly king who takes among whom were those who settled Rhode Island as a
care of the poor and dispenses justice. Christian scrip- refuge for religious dissenters. Similarly, Pennsylvania as
tures similarly imagine a community of believers united a haven for European dissenters and Maryland as a
under the messianic leadership of Christ. The Muslim Catholic enclave endorsed the principle of religious free-
Quran also describes an ideal social order uniting people dom that characterized More’s Utopia. The seventeenth-
of faith, as well as a future paradise for the just and century English revolution, resulting in a short-lived
virtuous. republic, spawned even more radical social experiments,
During the European Renaissance, many writers such as the communistic Diggers and Levelers.The Amer-
examined the conditions and institutions that would ican Revolution may have been a rationalist project (like
produce an ideal society. Some of these texts would its protégé in France), but the early Republic became a
become the template for new experiments in communal laboratory for a variety of religious and secular utopian
living. The most famous of these, of course, is Thomas experiments.